Where is the manual???

By now, we have all heard of the mother who made her son sign a contract in order to have the privilege of using an iPhone. Her son is 13. I absolutely love this idea. The points in this contract are so obvious, so duh, if you will. But spelling it out and making him sign it -- just brilliant. Kudos, mom! My problem, or maybe it is more appropriate to "what freaks me out", is not the rules by which we will make our children abide once they become proud borrowers of a cell phone which we purchase and lend to them. No, oh no. What freaks me out is at what age do we make them those proud borrowers??

I remember when our daughter was born. That first moment in the hospital room, when the nurses all leave us alone. It was just mom, dad and baby. Just hanging out. Staring at each other. I remember thinking, OK. What now? Where's that manual that outlines, minute by minute, my baby's first hours. Her first days. I NEED THE MANUAL!

And then, we brought her home and we realized hey! We will just wing it as all parents before us did, and as all parents after us will. Wing it! Yeah, score parental points right of the bat for winging it!

And then this whole smartphone, text messaging, social media, app ridiculousness set in and I find myself, once again, crying out for the manual. I don't want to hear "you'll know when they are mature enough to handle the responsibilities that come along with a cell phone." Or "each child is different. Use your parental compass. It will guide you." In the immortal words of my 3 year old: no, no, no, no, NO! My parental compass wants an answer. It wants a manual.

For some reason, this is the parental decision that wears on my mind...and my kids are nowhere near an appropriate age. Gone are the days when you could use a pay phone if you needed to call mom or dad. Or you just waited for them to pick you up...if they were late, they were late. You dealt with it. Unfortunately, in our world today, things just are not that simple. So, we will be forced to make that decision in a few years. At what age do we give them that freedom, that privilege? And to what extent? The most basic of phones so they can call and text, but none of this Facebooking or tweeting or surfing or downloading? An iPhone with a  parent/child contract? (Have I mentioned how much I love that contract idea??)

I think I have the whole "kid, here are the rules that go along with your new phone" thing down. Thanks to Mom there who paved the way with her contract! I still want the manual for age, though...and a manual for a whole bunch of other parenting decisions. As my sister-in-law put it this morning, "ever just sit back and wonder 'what if I'm doing this whole mom thing all wrong?'" At least I'm not alone in my feelings!

Paging Dr. Mom

One of the primary reasons I have for tapping into the social media world, which I see as possibly its most beneficial function, is seeking out advice from other moms. It is as true as it ever was, I believe, that it takes a village to raise a child, although that village may span the globe rather than consisting of the multi-generational households immediately closest to me. Many if not most of us in modern America live far from the villages and families of our youth. Our own mothers are not a few huts away when we need guidance. And so we turn to technology to serve needs unmet by proximity.

In this season of the epic flu, my 15-month-old has been sick for several weeks. She's got the typical cough, cold, and intermittent low-grade fever, but presumably due to all the mucus (holy phlegmoly, so much mucus), she's also been throwing up on a disturbingly regular basis. Which is the most fun.

The pukes began very unexpectedly and publicly - at church, in the midst of an adult Sunday school class (oddly and grossly enough, that makes my kids two for two in pulling that trick in the exact same circumstances). As social etiquette would dictate, I posted an apology on Facebook for everyone who witnessed the unfortunate event. It garnered 20 comments, which is way more than even my most witty thoughts typically elicit. Turns out, everyone has a puke story.

Thus began a week of hemming and hawing about taking her to the doctor before the sheer volume of vomit forced me to make the call. Our doctor's office does not "do" walk-in appointments or sick-kid hours and my insurance doesn't cover urgent care other than the ER (my total and utter dissatisfaction with that whole situation is a post for another time… maybe. Probably not.) And so we were squeezed in to see what I thought was going to be a pediatrician, but turned out to be a physician's assistant who gave us some nasal saline drops and a bulb syringe and bid us good day. Time well spent.

So where can we go when the experts leave us hanging - or our kids aren't quite sick enough to warrant a doctor's visit, or we're struggling with making that judgment call? Where else? To the village! Yes, Google and WebMD are all well and good for many questions, especially when it's a matter of self-diagnosis, but when it's my children's health I really seek comfort from the voices of people I know, whose parenting instincts have proven sound. Maybe I can't remember how high or long-lasting a fever needs to be before really worrying. Or I don't know what to look for as symptoms of an ear infection. Or I can't manage to get a doctor's opinion or prescription to try children's Mucinex, but if I can find a critical mass of support online, it's going to balance out the warnings on the label that I not give it to my child under 4. Maybe I've been up every hour for a couple nights straight and all I really need is a little commiseration.

Does this render our kids' pediatricians irrelevant? The answer's not yes, but it's not necessarily no. Having access to reassurances, words of warning, and several experience-informed opinions at the very least gives the mother of a sick child more resources than she might have while waiting for daylight in an overbooked doctor's schedule. I certainly hope we're all wise enough to recognize a true emergency, and not waste time scrolling through mommy message boards when we need to be dialing 911. (Side note: The American Red Cross and American Heart Association have great, simple mobile apps available for helping, heaven forbid, should we need to respond to those types of situations. My dad put me on to those. Go Dad!) But for all of the many ailments of lesser urgency, turning to our peers online gives us not only the near-guarantee of a quick reply, but also an added dose of perspective from those who have been there, whose response to routine illness is likely less clouded by emotions and sleep deprivation than our own.

It's just one way in which the community of moms empowers each other. We may not be as readily available to one another, in terms of physical presence, as prior generations. But our village is still intact. And during a trying flu season, it's been the only remedy that never fails to make me feel better.  

iPad Learn-to-Read Apps?

I've become increasingly disappointed in the learn-to-read/reading apps on the iPad. Maybe I'm just searching incorrectly. Maybe I'm not understanding what a reading app is really all about. Whatever the case, I feel like this is a great opportunity for greatness -- "the world's greatest learn-to-read app!" Takers?

I've had a lot of moms recommend the LeapFrog or vTech reading devices. I checked them out. They are a pretty penny for what they really are...not to mention all of the "books" you then buy. It makes me even more determined to find a whole bunch of fantastic reading apps on the iPad. No matter how long it takes!

If you have any suggestions on favorite reading apps, please, please, please head over to https://www.facebook.com/SociallyMediaMoms and share them with us. Or, if you happen to swear by one of these other eReaders for kids, share that, too. I'm new to the kindergarten world, so fire away! (And while you are there, feel free to like our page, as well!)

Thank you!

Hi, everyone!

I'm excited to be joining Katie on this blog with a post from time to time. I'm also a mom to two kids, a boy and a girl. I currently "stay home" with them, although it often feels like we spend too much time anywhere but home. In addition to momming, I volunteer with a group of military wives, instruct group fitness classes to fellow mamas with their littles in tow, teach Sunday school, sometimes run marathons, and, in my free time, read, play with our beagle, try to convince myself I'm crafty, bake (or at least drool over recipes), and write out my thoughts on life. I look forward to venturing further into the world of social media through this forum, and hope it might be possible to help myself and others become better in whatever ways are important to us through the potential for connectedness in modern parenthood.

I must confess, though, that I am admittedly somewhat of a novice and even more of a skeptic where the "biggies" of social media are concerned. I guess I'm a little bit old school. I just got my first smartphone in a well-timed Black Friday sale. Some might definitely would say I'm an organization freak, but I still prefer paper calendars, day planners, notepads and books. And I'm wary of putting personal information out there in internet-land when I don't fully comprehend how it might be used or who might have access to it.

I've even tried to quit. I pulled the proverbial plug. Shortly before my daughter was born, I went through an introspective nesting phase in which I felt an intense need for privacy and quiet in my life. I wanted to be very selective about how and with whom my husband and I shared the most special events of our personal lives, rather than broadcasting our news for all to see. I craved real human interaction, but anything less than that just felt cheap. And so when Facebook changed its format again (back when everyone was "getting timelined"), it served as the catalyst for me, in a self-righteous huff, to deactivate my account. (As if Facebook cared.)

And thus began the dark months. 

I anxiously waited out the last few weeks of my pregnancy, plus an extra-special eight days overdue. Shortly thereafter, it quickly became apparent that I had a(nother) difficult newborn, coupled with a sweet but demanding toddler. My babies take longer than some to sleep or eat very well, which is draining on me, to put it mildly. For several weeks I stayed in a rough place emotionally, and felt sequestered in an unfamiliar place physically - we'd moved 3000 miles from our families and closest friends when I was seven months pregnant. And now I was in inadvertently self-imposed social exile because I was the holdout with no Facebook account.

It took a few months to realize just how much I was missing by trying to maintain a shaky grasp on solitude that just doesn't exist in our world the way it once did. I wasn't making an anti-social media statement so much as just being antisocial, and once the hormones subsided, I was able to see clearly that it wasn't how I wanted to live my life. 

When I came to not only understand but value the role that Facebook and other social media platforms play in our lives, I realized that it was completely within my control to use it to my own benefit, that I could make this a life-enriching tool rather than being the tool.

I reactivated my account quietly - no "I'm back, baby!" status updates or rapid-fire wall posts, but with a wholesale pruning of my friend list. I started to follow pages for all the things I'd been missing out on. I found out where to look for playgroups near me, when my postnatal fitness class was rained out, which of the other families in my husband's unit were slated to move to the same post we were heading to next - none of which I would have known otherwise. And slowly, as I became more comfortable with the mom-of-two juggling act, my real life followed suit and we became more engaged in a world from which we'd detached for brief period of time. Though it sounds like it, it's not an exaggeration to say that allowing myself to rejoin the social media world had a dramatic impact on my overall well-being. I felt more connected, more in tune with my own interests and goals. I was inspired, I was involved, I was generally making progress in my life.

…And then I joined Pinterest.

It has been awhile...

Happy New Year! So, I have been slacking off on the blog, yes, I know. But I am happy to say I am excited about a new year! I won't lie and say this is some sort of new year, new me thing. I don't do resolutions. I always try to be a good mom, wife, sister, daughter (my kids are still giving me headaches and causing me to pull my hair out, so I think I'm continuing the good mom part!).

No, this is an exciting time because the lovely Ms. Rebecca has agreed to do some guest posts on the blog! For those of you who know the lovely Ms. Rebecca, you will understand why I am so excited. She is a phenomenal writer and she brings such an awesome perspective to everything. She is a mom of two, like me --  a son and a daughter. She knows her way around social media. And she is just plain awesome. And awesomely nice. (Secretly, my plan is to convince her to make such frequent guest posts that she becomes a regular! But shhhh!)

In the time that I have been silent, we launched a new website, stepped up our social media presence, launched an app and began work on some new blogs (yet to be launched). So, we've been a bit busy. But the newness of each is actually exciting to me. As I have said before, there usually isn't anything too exciting about using social media for a law firm. Zzzzzzzzz. But I am excited that we are now open to new stories, new sharings and basically a whole new way of looking at this apparent new way of doing things.

So, yes! The new year has a lot to offer. Stay tuned! Check back often! Share with your friends! Read on!